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05/30/2014 – 06/05/2014

“It is uncompromised in every single shot from beginning to end. Why is it so extreme? Because it is a film made in rage, and rage cannot be modulated. Those who think it is only about gluttony, lust, barbarism and bad table manners will have to think again. It is a film that uses the most basic strengths and weaknesses of the human body as a way of giving physical form to the corruption of the human soul.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“It is by now a legendary anecdote: Stanley Kubrick began adapting Peter George’s dead-serious nuclear thriller Two Hours to Doom and, suddenly struck by the ridiculousness of it all, transformed it into his seminal nightmare satire. The similarities—and, naturally, the differences—offer a telling look at why Strangelove refuses to age, why its ability to provoke simultaneous laughter and terror remains undiminished.” – Bilge Ebiri, Moving Image Source

“The rich, ripe roundness of it, the lush amalgam of the many elements of successful American show business that Mr. Willson brought together on the stage, has been preserved and appropriately made rounder and richer through the magnitude of film. The candid naïveté of the whole thing may disgust some sophisticates, but it is sure to delight the general audience.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

“Mary Poppins is kind of hot. Nobody wants to get to an age where you start to think a nanny from an old Disney movie is kind of hot, but it happens to the best of us. And she had those little hats and a talking umbrella and shit. I know a lot of men are intimidated by women who are more capable than them, but I would not be against dating somebody who can fly and sit on a cloud.” – Outlaw Vern, The Life And Art Of Vern

“Not exactly a lost film or an uncovered masterpiece, but still a pretty good indication of what Frank Capra could do during his prime. Made shortly after the runaway success of It Happened One Night, but before the ‘little man’ bromides of Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith took over, this horse-racing comedy drama is a damned sight better than Riding High, the lugubrious 1950 remake with Bing Crosby.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

“A genial and jovial entertainment that ties the original. Mr. Crosby has not been so fortunate in a role since Going My Way. Indeed, with respect and affection for the sixteen-year-old Broadway Bill, we might even stretch an estimation and say that Riding High beats it by a nose—or rather, by Mr. Crosby’s casual and gay personality, which leaps to the front at the barrier and paces the picture all the way.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

“Unlike its increasingly baroque series of sequels, Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien is a film about human loneliness amid the emptiness and amorality of creation. It’s a cynical ’70s-leftist vision of the future in which none of the problems plaguing 20th century Earth — class divisions, capitalist exploitation, the subjugation of humanity to technology — have been improved in the slightest by mankind’s forays into outer space.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“If you squint your eyes, it’s a brutal spaghetti western featuring homicidal bandito rapists howling with laughter and the mysterious anti-hero who inevitably rids them of gallons of their own fire-engine red marinara. Now open your peepers, drop a tab of LSD in each, and maybe you’ll be ready to find enlightenment in the rest of Jodorowsky’s pseudo-linear dreamscape, which dips its imagery in a bloodbath of groovy tarot psychedelia.” – Aaron Hillis, The Reeler

“Burton is a post-literate who cares very little about script and very much about visual expressionism. He tells the story in unforgettable images. In terms of acting – which is even more superlative, if possible, than the art direction – Batman is a movie about eyebrows. While Batman’s forehead is quizzical with its horizontal question marks, The Joker’s brow teems with killer caterpillars. It’s a hilarious, graphic touch.” – Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

“The more obscure and spiritually complete The Life of Oharu represents the Holy Grail of Japanese cinema. Devastating from beginning to end, its genius is not so much Mizoguchi’s caustic criticism of a money-obsessed society’s refusal to acknowledge its accountability for Oharu’s degradation, but that Mizoguchi uses her life to peel back the layers of the physical self and reveal the soul that lies bruised beneath.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

“It was a vindication for Berkeley, who proved he could change with the times and create a hit even without his signature production numbers. Mickey Rooney was nominated for an Oscar for his part, which the actor later said ‘may have been the best picture I ever made.’ Judy Garland was awarded a special Oscar that year ‘for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile for the past year.’” – Stephanie Thames, Turner Classic Movies

“With Ian Fleming’s hero we can escape into a super-cynical world of tough and materialistic romanticism: not identifying ourselves too closely with this intrepid and resourceful fellow for whom women and planes and evil bigwigs lie patiently in wait; but fellow-travelling with Mitty-ish pleasure and thanking our stars that we are not required to meet sinister Koreans with lethal hats at whose flinging all the world had better duck.” – Eric Shorter, The Telegraph

“A Star is Born is a tragedy. Not only for obvious reasons intra- and extratextual, but for its ability to capture the drudgery of machine-tooled Hollywood at the height of the studio era as it turned to face the threat of television, and the collateral of careers and dreams this transition left in its wake. It’s a glorious mess, unwieldy and top-heavy. But once you see it, you’ll be thinking about it for days.” – Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central

“Years later, I can now see that the terror instilled in me as a child by repeated viewings of The Wizard of Oz drove me to become a film critic. Was I the only one who had nightmares about the Winged Monkeys, their formations filling the sky like a cross between Goya’s Sleep of Reason and the Luftwaffe? Or the appalling realization that one’s entire experience, in living color yet, might be no more than a dream?” – Peter Keough, The Boston Phoenix

“It is one of the most beautiful things committed to celluloid, and as it often is with Demy, deceptively simple, while being actively, yet cat-foot quietly sad. This film confirms my worst fears about love. There’s no such thing as a Great love, or else, it doesn’t last; time obscures feelings and memories and what was once indelible becomes lost in a weed-molested corner of the mind.” – Veronika Ferdman, The House Next Door

“Renoir’s contempt for these rotten, insular aristocrats gets its strongest workout in the famed hunting sequence, when wild rabbits and pheasants are driven out into the open and slaughtered for sport. He once said later that none of these people are worth saving, but The Rules Of The Game isn’t the pheasant shoot that Renoir suggests: Its characters aren’t without depth or feeling, and they’re not incapable of love.” – Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club

“History hardly changes. The difference between medieval feudalism and modern-day capitalism, throughout Mizoguchi’s films, is the difference between women who are subjected to humiliation, and women, in useless attempts to pay the bills, who willingly submit themselves to it. History is the story of rape victims becoming prostitutes. It’s also the story of Women of the Night.” – David Phelps, MUBI Notebook

“I admire the daring formal devices, which more than compensate for any loss of close physical association with the characters. At times, we are placed almost as documentary fly on the wall observers looking past people in the foreground and characters with their backs turned. I’m also very taken with the smooth camera movement, the beauty of compositions, the lovely wintry settings, and the film’s quieter moments.” – Kenji, MUBI Notebook

“Faced with the unenviable task of building a movie around Brown and Freed’s dated songs, Comden and Green hit upon the idea of making the film a nostalgic period piece, a move that allowed them to gently send up the songs’ Tin Pan Alley corniness while reveling in their simple power. Singin’ In The Rain inventively satirizes the illusions of the filmmaking process while celebrating their life-affirming joy.” – Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club

“The picture takes on its glow of magic when Miss Caron is on the screen. Why this should be is fairly obvious. Miss Caron is not a beauteous thing, in the sense of classic features, but she has a sweet face and a most delightful smile. Furthermore, she has winsomeness, expression and youthful dignity—and she can dance like a gossamer wood-sprite on the edge of a petal at dawn.” – Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

“Incidentally, my rowdy audience at Do The Right Thing did not cheer the riot, nor did one break out at the end. Like me, they left having seen a reflection of their own lives onscreen. It was a sad, angry and bittersweet reflection, but we were happy to be able to look in the mirror. And the 1989 movie that should have caused a riot was Driving Miss Daisy, which reminded me and others like me just how Hollywood likes their Negroes.” – Odie Henderson, Movie Mezzanine

“This is not an ‘adult film’ in the X-rated sense; it is an adult film, patient and subtle. What amazes is that at just 26, Soderbergh displays the three qualities associated with mature filmmakers: a unique authorial voice, a spooky camera assurance, and the easy control of ensemble acting. Soderbergh delivers so much and promises even more.” – Richard Corliss, Time Magazine

“With wind machines, snow machines, and back-projection machines we conjured up the Arctic rigors of the Himalayas. The snow the actors crunched through was snow. The breath-showing puzzle—ludicrously ‘solved’ once by dry ice in actor’s mouths—was cracked by an ice house. The key to misty breath, red noses, and frosty eyebrows was so obvious it had been overlooked. Lower the temperature, fool.” – Frank Capra, The Name Above The Title

“If Lenny is a tragedy, it’s because Lenny Bruce couldn’t separate his artistic, legal, emotional, and physical problems, and the film doesn’t necessarily suggest that he should have tried. All that’s clear in the film is that Lenny was in an impossible bind. Comedy is hard, but, by the end of his career, Lenny Bruce was no longer even trying to be funny.” – Bob Westal, The House Next Door

“Couched in images and sounds that are kinetic and visceral, closer to poetry than pulp, the film is a perfect match of form and content. Its sculptural weight can only be appreciated on the big screen. Scorsese has never again treated the history of a form, a medium, and a culture so radically, or made so complicated a meditation on the relations among spectacle, entertainment, and art.” – Amy Taubin, The Village Voice